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Speak your truth to power on Leid Stories’ “Free Your Mind Friday,” the best on-air open forum anywhere. Share your take on issues in the news, topics we’ve covered on the program, or whatever you think merits further discussion or debate. Join us for a mind-freeing hour of great radio. Call 888-874-4888. Download this episode (right click and save)

Listen to Fred Kirschenmann, pioneer of organic farming and champion of agricultural resilience (and also President of Stone Barns and Distinguished Fellow at the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture— in conversation with Alison Rose Levy. The show focuses on the future of organic agriculture, the need for soil-based food agriculture, and the upcoming battle (in October) at the National Organics …

Download this episode (right click and save) Damien Mander, International Anti- Poaching Foundation Damien has lived an extraordinary life for a 37 year old. At 19, as a garbage collector in Melbourne he joined the Australian Defence Force, graduating through one of the most arduous courses as a RAN clearance diver. With the ADF’s counterterrorism restructure following 9-11, Damien joined …

Public opposition to free trade agreements, like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), that serve to increase inequality and concentrate corporate power has reached a loud crescendo. We got to this point through years of effort by thousands of civil society groups around the world, reaching out to educate people on the likely impacts of the very specific rules embedded in those …

Jack reviews the current condition of Japan’s economy, after 8 years of virtual perpetual recession despite record QE central bank injections, negative interest rates, and talk of helicopter money. The Central Bank of Japan as harbinger of global capitalist central banks policy direction and innovation. How central banks-bank of japan free money policies are not only no longer working, but are now having contrary negative effects on the global economy. Japan’s history of monetary policy first, plus austerity, since 1991 has doomed it to perpetual recessions—8 since 1991 and 5 since 2008. Japan as innovator of QE and negative rate policies. The results in creating trillions of non-performing bank loans (NPLs) and more than $13 trillion in negative bond rates since 2014 are reviewed. Growing NPLs and negative rates as indicators of failing capitalist monetary policies as investment slows, productivity declines, wages stagnate and real consumption falters worldwide. Why global economies are about to shift in 2017 to more fiscal infrastructure spending—but will do so ‘too little and too late’ to prevent recessions in 2017.

Memorial Day is over. You had your barbeque. Now, you can stop thinking about America’s wars and the casualties from them for another year. As for me, I only wish it were so. It’s been Memorial Day for me ever since I first met Tomas Young. And in truth, it should have felt that way from the moment I hunkered …

In February of 2008 under the administration of President George W. Bush, Jr., the United States Africa Command (AFRICOM) was officially launched with its base in Stuttgart, Germany. The reasoning behind the creation of AFRICOM has evolved over the last eight years from being a necessary security measure to protect vital American interests on the continent to a mechanism designed to assist post-colonial African states …

There is intense push for the NATO countries to make an overt intervention in Libya. In this moment, the justification is to fight the Islamic State and to prevent terror from spreading across the Mediterranean to Europe. As is the case in matters of the destruction of African societies, the governments of Britain and France are in the forefront of …

I’m uncomfortable using capitalism as a means to attaining gender equality. We can never be equals in a system where the size of your stack is used as leverage to demand human rights. While I understand how feminists came to see the right to have a bank account and a credit card independent of a man as foundational, it’s time …

As famine stalks millions of Ethiopians, and aid ships wait forever to unload at Ethiopia’s port of Djibouti, offers of free use of Eritrea’s Red Sea ports fall on deaf ears in Addis Ababa. According to Oxfam between 50% to 90% of Ethiopia suffered all or major crop failure due to the latest, greatest drought (this is just a guess …